Books: It's All a Plot

THE PARANOID STYLE IN AMERICAN
POLITICS by Richard Hofstadter. 315
pages. Knopf. $5.95.

The Great Conspiracy Against America first came to light in 1797, when
the pulpits of New England rang with denunciations of the Illuminati, a
sinister society of freethinkers who were purportedly prepared to
attack the U.S. with a number of secret weaponsamong them a tea that
caused abortion and a "method for filling a bedchamber with
pestilential vapours." By 1835, control of the conspiracy had passed to
the Pope, whose Jesuits were reported "prowling about all parts of the...